The “Beyond the Digital Return” project
This project is funded by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence based at Bayreuth University in Germany. It is concerned with research on “digital return,” a practice of repatriation/restitution of submerged but now digitally accessible and mediated musical and cultural material/heritage. The significance of the relatedness of “digital return” to processes of heritage and identity production as well as the decolonisation of institutional music archives was initially measured in South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana.
The concerns are about assessing the value of “digital return” to the development of sustainable cultures and in what “digital return” reveals about global demands for decolonising archives and museums. The questions are: what happens after the digitised object has been returned to its community of origin; what happens and what new social and cultural relations are produced when music and the culturally-specific, recorded/mediatised meanings, skills, memories, knowledges, sounds, and performance styles it (used to) represent(s) starts to recirculate, becomes accessible again, that is, in digitally mediated form? Is digital return and the potentially resulting “new heritage” the answer to developing sustainable music cultures or reviving an interest in them where it may be the case that they are on the brink of collapse or extinction?
The main objective of the project is to enhance our understanding of how repatriation/restitution in the field of music may produce new forms of cultural production associated with “heritage” and more precisely, intangible cultural heritage. This objective will be informed by accessibility, heritage politics, current trends of decolonising archives and the opening up of music archives, collections, and digital repositories (where digitization has been completed). These processes have for decades been frustrated by notions and realities of colonial and corporate authority and ownership. The project thus contributes to currently increasing debates on restitution and related rights issues such as ownership, copyright, and intellectual property rights.
The investigation on “digital return” and the interrelated cultural processes it has triggered (and more in the future provided more digitisation is achieved) and their effects on the processes of decolonisation in recent years, centres on four archives in this project: ILAM, South Africa, the GBC Gramophone Library, Ghana, and Equator Heritage Sound and Ketebul Music, Kenya. These “institutional agents” have made a strong effort in the last decade in digitisation, “digital return” and of “playing back” valuable and significant parts of the musical and cultural past/heritage in their respective countries, to individual communities, social groups, as well as in society at large. The contribution of these institutions and organisations to “digital return” and their interactive roles in it, that will allow two of the team members, Coester and Watkins, to reflect on our own involvement in “digital return” as academics (see Watkins et al. 2021), is thus a promising vantage point from which to experience this collaborative and interdisciplinary project of researchers and cluster members from three cluster centres, Rhodes University, Moi University, and the University of Ghana.
On investigation, it has come to my attention that collections, particularly in east Africa, are not digitised. In one of the largest islands in the Indian Ocean, Madagascar, there is a strong desire to digitise recordings but there are limited resources. In a major country such as Tanzania, a representative of the arts and culture ministry informed me that they are not in favour of digitisation. These are but two examples out of many. So, while the objective of the initial project is to find out the implications of digitised heritages after digital return, how can this be realised when many collections on the African continent are not digitised? In the absence of governmental support in Tanzania, it became a priority to seek an alternative. John Kitime, a musician, broadcaster and digitisation enthusiast, stepped into the fray.
Lee Watkins and John Kitime
Since January 2023, he has been travelling far and wide in Tanzania collecting video cassettes of musical performances, cassettes, vinyl records and other media. The Dhow Countries Music Academy in Zanzibar embarked on a similar mission of searching for taarab recordings. In 2024 they will bring these recordings to John to digitise. John received start-up funding from the Cluster while ILAM has been providing additional support by way of equipment and funding for travelling and subsistence. And in January 2024 we will visit Dar es Salaam to take more equipment to John while also training him in metadata software. The digitised collection, now bearing his name, will be backed up at ILAM. John needs as much support as possible. If there are any offers, readers of this page are invited to contact him at jokitime@gmail.com. You can also read his very interesting blogs. See below:
https://tanzaniamusicarchive.blogspot.com/2023/11/tanga-day-threei-meet-wagosi.html?m=1
https://tanzaniamusicarchive.blogspot.com/2023/11/kassim-el-siagi-aka-jocker-brown-soul.html?m=1
https://tanzaniamusicarchive.blogspot.com/2023/11/day-2-in-moshi-i-get-shocked.html?m=1
https://tanzaniamusicarchive.blogspot.com/2023/11/salum-abdallah-yazidu-of-cuban-marimba.html?m=1
https://tanzaniamusicarchive.blogspot.com/2023/11/moshi-day-three.html?m=1
https://tanzaniamusicarchive.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-lost-grave.html?m=1